Metallica – 72 Seasons (2023)

April 20, 2023

Nowhere near as bad as people are making it out to be, but still lacking in spark and originality, that’s for sure.When I first heard the tracks that the band dropped in anticipation of this record, to me they sounded overcompressed, synthetic and false. Lars’ drums sounded quantised to all hell, and James’ vocals were autotuned to death. I understand my man James is pushing 60, but y’know, idk, fuckin’ Michael Gira doesn’t use autotune. Hey, fucking Lou Reed didn’t use autotune on LuLu, you feel me? Haha

Thankfully, the rest of the album is not so bad. The production style remains the same, but I think the speedy, thrashier songs like those released in advance (in order to snag the true metalheads and start a “Metallica are back and they are heavy again!” kinda conversation, no doubt) expose the dirty studio trickery more because, well, as I’ve said, these guys are old now and playing at that intense thrash metal speed is just not doable anymore. I mean, Voivod are still thrashing after 40 years, for example, but even their latest effort – as good as it was – uses the same studio trickery. You can’t stay young forever.

Anyway, I’m rambling. Songwriting wise, this is probably on par or better than Hardwired, and probably on par with Death Magnetic. It isn’t the car crash the internet made me think it would be, but it’s also pretty uninspired. Would I listen to it ever again? Probably not.